How To Make Color Range Selection In Photoshop

Learn how to cut out hair using the color range tool in photoshop. Use the color range tool to select hair.

Have you ever wanted to cut out an image with a solid color background, like say pink or blue or green, and wondered what the best tool was to use in Photoshop? That would be the Color Range tool. I’m gonna show you an example of how to make a selection with Color Range. Also, some tips on how to cut out hair. All with the purpose of putting it on a separate background.

How To Make a Selection With Color Range

So, we’re going to use the Color Range tool, to cut out this subject from this green-ish background. And we already have a subject layer. And then I have a texture layer below it. And then I have a color-fill layer that I’m gonna use for testing the cutout at a different point, just to see if there are any areas that are still showing any kind of color fringing from this original color. The Color Range tool is at the top, under Select, Color Range. We’re going to be using the Sample Colors, so make sure that is selected. There are all these other options, but this option is going to allow us to use this Eyedropper tool right here. We want the Fuzziness all the way to the left. We want this Selection to be clicked because we wanna see the actual pixels or the colors that we’re selecting in the preview. And we want Selection Preview to None right now, and uncheck Invert. So now, with the Eyedropper selected, click once on the image. Then click on the plus Eyedropper, and you can click and drag, or click anywhere. Selecting the color, don’t click on the hair. And just by clicking around, you can see in the preview, that we’ve got a pretty good selection. But what we want to do is, we want to see a preview of how it looks. And we can try any of these other preview-selection modes and see which one looks best so that we can actually see what’s going on. I’m going to go with the White Matte. I’m also going to click this Invert button because right now we can see from preview that the white areas, which are the areas that are selected, is the background, and we want the subject selected. So, if we click on Invert, we can see in real-time where we have our selection. So, now we can use the Fuzziness to control how wide a range of colors is in the selection. So, to increase that range, that’s actually that color we’re after, if I bring up the Fuzziness a little bit, you can see that the selection is more refined and the only areas that we see are right around the hair, there’s some fringing. But the rest of our selection looks really good. And we’re gonna take care of that fringing. I don’t wanna see that. The ends of the hair get distorted, because of the Fuzziness is too high. So, clicking OK. There’s my selection. And if I click on the Add New Layer Mask, there is our subject cutout background, with Color Range.

How To Remove Color Fringe From A Cutout.

But now we need to go further and refine the edges of the hairs. And we have a couple of techniques that we’re going to use to do that. So, I’m going to create a new layer, and on this layer, I’m going to take care of the fringing, so I named that Color Fringe. And anything I do on that layer, I want it to just affect the layer below, so I’m going to click that new layer, two layers below, with option Command+G. And since we’re only concerned with color, gonna change the blend mode of that layer to Color, and we’re going to use the Brush tool to paint in the hair, or the color of the hair, by sampling close to hair and painting just around the area where we see the green fringe coming in from the previous background. But first, let’s check the Eyedropper tool. I just wanna see what my sample size, and it should be about five by five, and Sample, Curtain & Below, make sure you have that. And back to the Brush tool, B for the Brush tool. And we’re going to go through this image, gonna Sample, option All, and paint in right on the edges where you see the color coming through. So we’re getting rid of that fringe. Now, because we have the Color Range layer clipped to the layers below, every time we paint, it’s not gonna paint outside. It is clipped to the layer below, which is our mask, so I’m trying to sample some color right below where the fringe is, the color fringe from the previous background, and paint that in. I’m going through this rather quickly. So, here is our texture that we are going to put behind our subject. There’s also something that you should probably try and do. I mean, if you were gonna leave it on this particular texture background, you can see that it looks pretty good. But it’s when you do a cutout and you try and test it with the darker colors. So, even that isn’t, isn’t bad, it looks pretty good. But as you can see, this is, looks a lot better with the lighter colors, and that’s pretty normal for some of these cutouts like this.

Final Step

But there is something else you can do, to help get rid of any additional color fringing that is still leftover. You can refine this mask, just click on the mask, double click, and bring up the Select And Mask tool. Here at the bottom, there’s something called Decontaminate Colors. Now, by clicking that, you already saw that it make a slight change. And you can vary what that actually does. I’m gonna leave it on 90% right now. 80%. And it will output to New Layer with Layer Mask. Click OK. And we have a new layer that has been refined. And there is our finished image. So, the Color Range tool has many uses. I just wanted to give you an example of a case where it’s probably the most common use.